Africa RISING Learning event 2

• Take stock of important lessons learned (and important achievements) across the program in the past year and revisit previous learning event insights to prioritize what we want to include in this year's learning event agenda
• Focus our program learning on specific elements:
  • Revisit the program framework and identify what needs to be done about - if anything - in the light of recent lessons and experiences
  • Share lessons across the program about how Africa RISING teams have been elaborating their farm typologies and dealing with diversity
  • Discuss and clarify innovation systems theory and practice across Africa RISING projects (with emphasis on innovation & R4D platforms)
• Review cross-program learning and this learning event to improve communication and coordination throughout Africa RISING.

• 9.00 Welcome, introductions, agenda and objectives
  • Process: Welcome by IITA rep, Jerry, Irmgard, Peter,
  • (TG) Social networking exercise on introductions
  • (ELB) to introduce agenda and objectives
• 9.30 Overall review of the progress in the three mega-sites: ESA, ET, WA + Q&A
  • Process: Exhibition space set up for each of the regions - needs to happen
    • Brief presentation (5-10') about what each region learnt in the past year, and the significance of that learning for themselves and the program. For the rest of the time, people can find out about the work in each of the regions... and 20' to go around the regional spaces to ask additional questions. (ELB)
• 10.30 Break
• 11.00 Overall review of lessons learnt on Comms, gender, M&E and nutrition (TG)
  • ARE THESE 4 ENOUGH? Hope so
  • Process: Brief presentations (10') about the learning that happened (key learning points, lessons and their significance) for each of these groups and for the program as a whole - and then these cross-cutting teams sit in different spaces across the room and welcome any question or comment from the participants.
    • Comms: Peter Ballantyne
    • M&E: Cleo Roberts
    • Gender: Annet Mulema,
    • Nutrition: Regis Chikowo
• 12.00 Gallery tour of the insights gathered at the previous learning event + identifying areas for attention (what do we want to focus on this time around) (ELB)
  • Process: 15' of going around last year's learning event (Summary sheets to prepare) and 15' teasing out / voting for important issues to include in this year's learning event agenda, possibly using dotmocracy exercise.
• 12.30 Lunch break
• 13.45 Addressing and accommodating diversity in farm typologies and beyond. (Talk Show) (PB)
  • 10' intro PPT by Jeroen Groot (to be shared with regional teams beforehand so they can prepare themselves best): What is meant by typologies, how are they used. Does having different approaches matter? What types of learning do we want/need?
  • Other guests invited to share their perspective (who might that be? One person from each region + one person from IFPRI)
    • Per Hillbur
    • Jeroen Groot
    • Peter Thorne
    • Kindu Mekonnen
• 14.15 Gallery run (bus stop) of the farm typologies and ways to deal with diversity across the regions + distributing good points and critical questions
  • Process: 5-10' presentation in each region (to prepare). Again going back to the regional spaces and with some regional reps ready to answer, finding out more details about the process in these regions (for 25')...
  • 10' plenary: Teasing out the key comments, good ideas and critical questions across the diversity/typology specialists (PB)
    • ESA: Per Hilbur
    • ET: Peter Thorne / Kindu Mekonnen
    • WA: Jeroen Groot
• 15.00 Break brought over into the world café
• 15.15 (World café) (TG)
  • PB: Wondering if the focus should be on ways to improve whatever we need to do about typologies.
  • How do we address and accommodate diversity and variability in trials and does it impact the generalisation of the results (how do you present the results)?
  • How can these results be shared between regions and countries and what can we learn from that?
  • How can we use our results effectively to reach improvements in farms of different types?
  • Process: World café going over break and finishing at 4pm with the key results. World café with all the same questions around all the same tables (groups of 8 around the table) for each round...
  • Table hosts: Ewen, Peter, Jeroen, Zelalem, Cleo, Birhanu, Per, Fred, Elias, Bekele.
• 16.15 Introduction of the program framework as it is (and identified areas for improvement to work on beforehand) + 1-2-4-all to generate most immediate needs for improvement and bringing it back in (Samoan circle) discussion (PB / ELB)
  • PB: suggest just present it, identify any learning points encountered so far, and then organize discussions on the framework. one group on overall framework; others looking at different critical elements (the compnents, the hypotheses, etc). Retain the learning focus and aim to generate and necessary changes for a next version.
  • Process:
    • 10' of presentation (by Peter Thorne) on the current program framework and revisiting our key hypotheses and components...
    • 15' of discussion around the table to discuss this freely, leading to...
    • 15' of 1-2-4-all to generate immediate improvement needs (ELB)
    • 20' Samoan circle to generate the final list of priority improvements that need to be worked upon the next day (at program level)
• 17.00 Brief recap of the day, announcing tomorrow's program and close (TG)
  • Process: Pop corn for recap + spectrogram to see how we're doing with this day.
• 19.00 Cocktail dinner party

• 08.45 Brief recap of previous day's work (TG)
  • Process: Not necessary? Show pictures taken by Comms specialists etc.
• 09.00 'Working with and optimizing innovation systems'
  • Process: Brief interview of reps from the three regions, involved in platforms and innovation systems work (to identify), to find out what they understand by systems and platforms and the lessons they have gathered in the process with their platform work, in practice - Talk Show
  • PB: Can we focus again on learning rather than 'progress'. I think we need to do a quick assessment/stocktaking of different dimensions of innovation systems in the projects, then zoom in on specific mechanisms and their strengths, weaknesses, lessons, learning ...
  • PB: spend more time on the stocktaking; then dive into specific mechanisms/tools.
  • Process: (ELB)
    • 5-10' intro by someone (Jens Andersson) to set the scene about innovation systems (what that thinking/perspective is all about and how it materializes in our work) and relate that to innovation platforms...
    • 25' talk show with reps from the 3 regions and globally to talk about innovation systems and platforms... MC: ELB. This work should be done on the basis of one slide per region (Brief people - but who?) about: what your platforms are called, where do they work [at what level], what roles and responsibilities do they have, what have been challenges with them so far, what are good insights and encouraging results?
    • Talk show guests:
      • Ethiopian Highlands: Zelalem Lema
      • ESA: Jens Andersson, Per Hilbur
      • WA: Per Hilbur
• 09.30 Visiting regional work on IPs and innovation systems
• 09.45 Coffee break with World café starting around 10am
• 10.00 Working with and optimizing innovation systems - Rotating world café (Process: Have 3 types of tables/questions and every time the participants move to another table/question) (TG)
  • 45' on the following questions:
    • What do you understand by innovation systems - what is the essence of innovation systems?
    • What do you like or not about innovation systems?
    • What can we do across the program to improve our innovation systems work?
    • Table hosts: Ewen, Peter, Beliyou, Wubalem, Zelalem, Elias, Jens, Per, Regis
  • 30' plenary summary
• 11.00 Open Space to work on whatever takes the fancy of the participants... with the following boundaries: "What do we have to learn or do more of" (ELB)
• 13.00 Lunch break
• 14.00 Splitting in regional (and global) sub-groups to revisit a) program framework, b) diversity/typology work, c) innovation systems/platforms, d) anything else from the Open Space or otherwise: Specify what steps will we take to identify improvements. Common template to develop and use (PB)
• 15.00 Presentation of group work results with dedicated commentary (and connection with learning event results), with special emphasis on points that need to be addressed in the M&E annual meeting and keeping messages about what we learned from the other teams (to be written on a paper plane)
  • Process: Presentation in 5' and max 5' (ELB)
  • Commentary (PB)
• 15.30 Break
• 16.00 Reviewing learning event and program learning (ELB)
  • Process:
    • 25/10 Crowdsourcing to reflect on cross-project / program learning around the topic: what important program level processes and cross-project activities are necessary to foster learning, coherence and impact in Africa RISING?
    • 1-2-4-all again on the process of the learning event...
• 16.45 Close and thank you (TG)
  • Process:
    • Evaluation form to fill out
    • Sharing our learning from other regions... (3 regions + globally)
    • Thank you and closing statements - Peter, Irmgard, SAG member, Jerry.